BURY COUNCIL must reverse their decision to collect household rubbish bins only once every three weeks.

Their move follows the example of Falkirk council in Scotland which launched three-weekly collections in May and Gwynedd council in Wales which will be making the change this year.

Collecting our bins regularly and frequently is one of the basic functions that we expect our councils to carry out. It is what we pay for after all. It may only be three councils that are prepared to collect bins so rarely but it is only a matter of time before others catch on to this cost-cutting measure.

Officials claim that decreasing the number of collections will encourage more recycling and the council is aiming to save £800,000 a year through this measure.

The reality is that they will be subjecting the residents of Bury to the smell of rotting rubbish and an increase in the number of vermin. Hot summer weather is to be dreaded under these unpleasant circumstances. It will also encourage fly-tipping as desperate residents resort to extreme measures to get rid of their waste.

Local government minister Brandon Lewis is right when he says that people want collections “every week”. Bury council and others guilty of cutting down on this vital service should heed his words and stop shirking their responsibility to the people they are supposed to serve.

Snooping defeats terror

The Government is right to rush emergency laws through Parliament to ensure that Britain’s security services do not lose the right to track mobile phone calls, emails and text messages.

The measures are in response to a privacy ruling from the European Court of Justice that threatened to erode these powers.

With the threat of terrorism growing due to the situation in Iraq and Syria the security services cannot afford to be hamstrung by such diktats. The Prime Minister said yesterday that these powers have been used in the past to stop terror plots.

It is clear that they are necessary to keep us safe. Privacy concerns are valid but in the current climate doing everything possible to protect this country from terrorism is far more important.